The invasion has done nothing to make us "safe". It is a casus belli for militant Muslims to rally round and it is no doubt making it much easier for anti-western, anti-US terrorists to recruit; therefore, it has made us less safe. We are well prepared for a battlefield war so we seek our enemy on a battlefield and amongst Iraq civilians. Waging this war on a battlefield makes the enemy stronger.
Read More From: William Safire's Revised Reasons for War
The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.
Read More From: Losing Your Job Overseas is Good for You
Back in the old USA things heated up this week when Janet Jackson's nipple pushed the Iraq war and the announcement of an independent commission to investigate why our intelligence is so... well... unintelligent. Michael Powell, son of Gen Colin...
Read More From: The Danger of Nipples
Budgets, as the president said in his Saturday radio address, are a matter of priorities, of making hard choices. The president's madcap tax-and-borrow policies have run up a staggering $500 billion deficit -- without creating the jobs needed to keep...
Read More From: Jesse Pounds Bush on Budget?
The CIA named a new inspector to lead the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction Friday, choosing a veteran investigator who has expressed recent skepticism that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons that posed an immediate threat. Charles Duelfer, the...
Read More From: US Arms Inspectors Past Present and Future
The names of six passengers sounded similar to those of terrorist suspects provided by the FBI, prompting the French government to ground the planes, the official said on condition of anonymity. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy refrained from criticizing the United...
Read More From: Spelling Error by FBI Grounds French FLights to the US
Stop Canceling flights. Our enemies understand the value of false intelligence, and they understand the massive difficulty they would have highjacking another passenger plane. Terrorist want to disrupt their enemy and we help them succeed when we panic and cancel passenger flights. They next big attack will not be by passenger airline.
Read More From: Terrorists Win by Canceling Flights
Israel plans a major expansion of Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights, the government confirmed Wednesday. The announcement angered Syria, from which Israel seized the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The plan, approved two weeks ago, comes just two...
Read More From: Israel Wishes Syria "Happy New Year"
Armed helicopters will patrol the restricted airspace over the Strip on New Year's Eve to protect Las Vegas from a potential terrorist attack. The military gunships will be equipped with weaponry that can "dismantle or disrupt any kind of ground...
Read More From: WIld West Show on the Las Vegas Strip
The Bush administration would be wise to heed the warning of German legal theorist Otto Kirchheimer: "Justice in political matters is more tenuous than in any other field of jurisprudence, because it can so easily turn to mere farce."
Since 9/11, the administration has declared that "enemy combatants" captured in the "war on terrorism" will be tried before traditional military tribunals following cautious precedents laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1942 Quirin case dealing with Nazi saboteurs who landed on Long Island, and the 1946 case of the fallen Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita. The "dirty bomber," Jose Padilla, presented an unusual case: He was both an American citizen and an aspiring al-Qaida terrorist. Arrested on U.S. soil, Padilla was declared an "enemy combatant" and held for close to two years without charges and without seeing his lawyer.
Read More From: War and Justice
The Department of Homeland Security announced today that all visitors to the US will be photographed and fingerprinted. On December 31, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be implementing its 'US-VISIT' programme to enable it to effectively...
Read More From: Homeland Security Fingerprint Plan
The best reason to invade Iraq was always to save Iraq's people from Saddam's oppression. The risks he posed to other countries - even the risk of WMD, had there been any - could be, and were being, contained by...
Read More From: Who's Next in the War on Oppressive Governments
The Bush Administration has decided to ban countries that did not support the war in Iraq from bidding on $18.6 billion in contracts to rebuild the country, according to a directive released Tuesday. The administration said the ruling is not...
Read More From: Bush Tries Bribe to Win International Support for Iraq Policy
Overall intelligence has been "very, very good," Card said Sunday. But, he added, "Intelligence is a collection of dots, and then an analysis on how those dots might be connected. Some of those dots may not be what they appear to be, and some of the connections may not have been what people would have suggested."
Searchers have found quantities of chemicals and substances that could be used to make both weapons and legitimate civilian items, such a soap and bottles of clorox bleach (which can be used to manufacture deadly chlorine gas or to get nasty blood stains out of white school clothes).
Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, said in the Dec. 15 issue of Newsweek magazine that he was proud of what Gen. Tommy Franks, who planned and commanded the American-led invasion of Iraq, did "up to the moment of...
Read More From: Hillary and Newt, Sittin' in a Tree...
Why Bush's "War Against Terrorism" Cannot Be Won Full Article [Editor's Note: Jim Fetzer, a former commissioned officer in the Marine Corps, believes that the policies we are adopting reflect outmoded patterns of response that might have been appropriate during...
Read More From: The War on Terror Cannot Be Won
Since Bush the Usurper (I refuse to call the man president since he didn't actually win the election) started the Iraq war on my birthday I've been pretty glum about the sorry state of our foreign dealings (I refuse to call it a policy because I can detect no policy). We seem determined now to maintain a permanent state of war. The trouble is... this war is no more winnable then the last war... the war on drugs.
What I find really troubling since my return to the land of the free is the inclusion of the Iraq war as part of the war on terror. Huh? I just don't get it. Either our intelligence on Iraq was WAY off, or the executive branch lied about the existence of WMD's in Iraq. I find both possibilities pretty appalling. In any case, UN inspectors had been very effectively containing Iraq for a decade. The Afgan war had considerable justification (and very considerable support from just about the entire world). The Iraq war had the following top reasons.
1. Iraq has WMD's (Oops...)
2. Saddam gassed his own people (with our gas) and is really bad. (Oh Please)
3. Saddam is a threat to peace in the middle east. (See Israel for a really good example)
4. Daddy don't like him.
5. Dick don't like him.
6 There is oil there.
7. Iraq harbors terrorists. (It turns out this was true, but only in the north which was under the protection of the USAF and not Saddam for the last 10 years.
8. The economy needs a boost.
9. Keeping the country in a constant state of war will be good for the presidents approval ratings.
10. Promotion of Liberal Government. (This would have been a laudable reason but without the threat of WMD's, Congress and the American people would never have supported the war).
Read More From: George Bush, The Iraq War, and All That
"I don't know why I or anyone else in the U.S. government should deny ourselves the opportunity to hear from others and who have ideas with respect to peace," Powell said at a news conference during a visit to Tunisia. But he added that the meeting "in no way undercuts our strong support" for Israel and the road map.
Read More From: Powell Should Meet Geneva Pact Architects
"When apparent homicides occur in secret prisons, and promised investigations show no results, the country's cherished values of humane treatment and respect for the law are dishonored."
Read More From: Evidence of Torture in US Prisons in Afganistan
A Chronological History of the Iraq War from the UK Guardian Paper....
Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was Done
Read More From: Scout's Motto: "Be Prepared" not well understood at the White House or the Pentagon
n response to the question, “How worthwhile do you think fighting this war was for America?,” 50 percent indicated doubts over the justifications for the invasion. Nineteen percent selected the conditional answer that the war was “probably worthwhile” and 20 percent of troops answered that the war was of “little value,” while 11 percent damned it as “not worthwhile at all.” Only 28 percent responded that it was “very worthwhile” and another 20 percent that it was “worthwhile.”
Thirty-five percent answered that they were either “mostly unclear” or “not clear at all” about why they were in Iraq. A National Guardsman wrote: “In past wars...it seemed as though everyone had a ‘known’ mission. We’re in the dark.” A 21-year-old regular Army infantryman told the reporters: “A lot of the stuff we’re doing here doesn’t make any sense at all. Now that we’ve been lied to, we don’t trust anyone.” One soldier, whose friend was killed, referred to the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction and said: “I just don’t see what we’re doing here that would justify losing someone like Herbert.”
Read More From: Bush Reports "Morale is High" While Heros in Iraq Disagree
Mephistopheles introduced himself to Faust as "ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Boese will und stets das Gute schafft. (a part of that power, which always wants to do evil, but always does good)." Reverse this, and you have the tragedy of Bush: he wants universal good, but he will end up doing some terrible things.
Read More From: George W Bush, Tragic Character?
President George Bush pulled one hell of a political stunt on Thursday when he flew in Air Force One all the way to Iraq International Airport for another chance to wear a military uniform and to thank troops for defending America by attacking countries which pose no particular threat.
He carried a turkey and stuffing. He hugged soldiers. He shook hands with soldiers. He stayed all of 2.5 hours before jetting back (at tax payers expense) to the land of the free where the citizens are not allowed to see the caskets of dead Americans as they return home from Bush's preposterous war.
Read More From: Cheap Political Stunts 101
Security concerns were heightened Wednesday when the mass circulation Daily Mirror newspaper, in a 15-page scoop, showed how it got one of its reporters inside Buckingham Palace for two months posing as a royal servant. The Mirror said Ryan Parry...
Read More From: Bush Assassination "Could Have Been Done with Ease"
A new poll suggests that Americans are ready to replace Bush with 4 to 1 in favor of going "Bush Free"
See the results or go here to vote.
Read More From: New Poll Finds Kinky Americans Want to Shave Bush 4 to 1.
"I was offered photos of Jessica Lynch. I purchased them in order to keep them out of circulation, not to publish them," Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, said in a statement read by a publicist. "Jessica Lynch is being used as a pawn by the media and by the government to create a hero who can sell this war to the American people."
"The U.S. government wasn't alone in their actions," his statement said. "They were co-conspirators with the media, who wanted to force-feed us a Joan of Arc."
All this makes Lynch my hero of the war. Not only is she willing to take off her clothes for the camera... she is also smart and brave enough to resist the Bush administration attempts to make us feel better about the war.
Clearly he wasn't thinking. Amongst the lovers of the Stars and Bars are an awful lot of white bread eaten, federal government fearing, nigger-hating, shotgun toting rednecks who would never vote for Howard Dean. The rest are usually conservatives who will never vote for Dean. He did manage, however, to ensure that a large chunk of the Southern Black vote will go elsewhere (even though he has Jessie Jackson's support).
Read More From: Howard Dean's Flag Gaff
CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service, the iTunes Music Store, that he launched in April. As iTMS is the leading download service, with 80 per cent market share (or so Jobs claimed), where's your 99 cents per song going?
Read More From: Apple Makes no Money from its Online Music Store - Steve Jobs
In his speech in Washington, President Bush was blunt in castigating what he (and the neo-conservatives) regard as the mistakes of the past. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did...
Read More From: Bush Mid East Policy
In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable.
Read More From: Jessica Lynch criticizes the Military for Casting her Ordeal as a Patriotic Fable
The former regime of Saddam Hussein had warned the Spanish government that its staunch support for the Bush administration in the war on Iraq could have consequences. The Spanish Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it was pulling most of the staff...
Read More From: Another 'Coalition Partner' Pulls Out of Iraq
The ceremony included an opportunity for objectors to speak. Three protesters spoke for 10 minutes, including a Pennsylvania man who launched into a graphic description of gay sex acts.
An openly gay man can speak for God, the Episcopal Church USA proclaimed Sunday as the Rev. V. Gene Robinson was installed as a bishop of New Hampshire.
Read More From: Bishop Gene Robinson Installed in Hockey Rink - Protesters were Invited.
Israel has been described as the top threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran, by an unpublished European Commission poll of 7,500 Europeans.
Israeli Ministers and spokesman have been at pains recently to insist that a definition of modern 'anti-semitism' should include criticism of the way the state of Israel chooses to protect itself, defining that criticism as an overt attack on Israel's survival.
Read More From: EU Poll Names Israel Top Threat to Peace
Israel's top-ranking soldier believes that hard-line policies against the Palestinians are working against Israel's strategic interest and contributed to the downfall of the previous Palestinian prime minister, the Israeli media have reported.
Read More From: Israel Top General Speaks Out, Mideast violence continues
The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded Wednesday that CIA Director George Tenet turn over documents concerning prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq by week's end.
Read More From: The CIA is the Latest Wing of the Administration Accused of Withholding Documents
The number of US soldiers killed in combat in postwar Iraq rose yesterday above the number killed before May 1, the day President George Bush declared victory.
The almost daily casualties, many of them aged 21 or younger, are beginning to impact on the US domestic agenda and, with the presidential election looming next year, could put pressure on Mr Bush to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible.
Read More From: US Military Death Toll Goes Up
Last Week - Filipinos demanding national freedom today burned one hundred US flags in protest as Air Force One unloaded George W. Bush, who was in Manila for an eight-hour visit to the Philippines...
Read More From: Picture of the Week
Leading linguist and commentator Noam Chomsky has said President George Bush will have to "manufacture" another threat to American security to win re-election in 2004 after US failure in occupying Iraq.
"It is a frightened country and it is easy to conjure up an imminent threat," Chomsky said.
Read More From: Chomsky's Campaign Advice to Bush: Conjure Up an Imminent Threat to Win the Election
President Bush told ambassadors from Muslim states that his administration does not tolerate anti-Muslim bigotry, but he stopped short of condemning a senior Pentagon official who said Muslims do not worship "a real God."
The trouble is, General Boykin IS a member of the administration AND he often speaks his bigotry in uniform. Any General who sees the war as a holy war against satan is unfit to be a general in the US military and much less fit to be a key member of the President's administration.
Read More From: Fire General Boykin
Were the attacks preventable given the intelligence delivered to the White House in the weeks leading up to 9/11? The 9/11 Commission wants to know, and so do the voters.
President Bush declined today to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel.
The president said in a brief meeting with reporters that the documents were "very sensitive" and that the White House was still discussing the issue with the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey.
Read More From: Bush Cites Executive Privilege - Refuses to Give Documents to 9/11 Commission
"The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity that's available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become," Bush told reporters.
A series of suicide bombings shook Baghdad early today, including an attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and blasts at four Iraqi police stations that punctuated two days of bloody violence in this capital city.
Read More From: Iraq Escalates with Red Cross Bombing - at least 34 Killed
I WAS in the police station in the town of Fallujah when I realised the extent of the schizophrenia. Captain Christopher Cirino of the 82nd Airborne was trying to explain to me the nature of the attacks so regularly carried out against American forces in the Sunni Muslim Iraqi town. His men were billeted in a former presidential rest home down the road - "Dreamland", the Americans call it - but this was not the extent of his soldiers' disorientation. "The men we are being attacked by," he said, "are Syrian-trained terrorists and local freedom fighters." Come again? "Freedom fighters." But that's what Captain Cirino called them - and rightly so.
The worst problem facing US forces in Iraq may not be armed resistance but a crisis of morale. Robert Fisk reports on a near-epidemic of indiscipline, suicides and loose talk.
Read More From: Iraq Freedom Fighters - One, two, three, what are they fighting for?
Once we strip away the now-debunked U.S. justifications for entering Iraq, what we're left with is an old-fashioned invasion of a foreign country.
Read More From: Protecting the American homeland has never been easy ... Just ask an Indian
The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents if they are not turned over within weeks. (New York Times Article)
Read More From: 9/11 Commission Threat To Subpoena Oval Office Intelligence Reports
We are a middle aged country stomping around in flag-print-diapers and sucking on a missile-shaped-pacifier wondering why nobody wants to play with us.
I love baseball and I love the 7th inning stretch. These days I have to turn the sound down on the TV so I can hear myself sing "Take me out to the Ball Game" over the patriotic crap screeching out of the stadium.
Read More From: Take Me out to the Ball Game - God Bless America
Mr Rumsfeld warns: "The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."
"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror," he told his top lieutenants. "Is our current situation such that the harder we work, the behinder we get?"
Read More From: Rumsfeld Wakes up to the Bad Dream - The War on Terror May Be Making Things Worse
After receiving hundreds of letters from unhappy troops, Stars and Stripes conducted an "unscientific" survey , questioning nearly 2000 soldiers in Iraq. One-third reported that their mission was "not clearly defined" or "not at all defined". Thirty-one percent said that the war in Iraq was of "little value" or of "no value at all."
Read More From: Low Morale of US Soldiers in Iraq
We have to accept that we are fighting for democracy... not to tear democracy down. A group of former military officers, federal judges and diplomats are urging the US Supreme Court to intervene the case of the indefinite detentions of...
Read More From: Detainees in Guantanamo Bay only get a lawyer when they agree to plead guilty
The Catholic Church is teaching poor and vulnerable people in countries stricken by Aids that condoms do not provide protection against HIV/AIDS because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass. The church is making...
Read More From: The Vatican is Evil and Twisted - Church Claims about Condoms and HIV/AIDS
A fence, a wall, or a cage? Whatever you call it, there can be no doubt that building it will cause an escalation in the violence. Perhaps not this year or the next, but the inescapable logic of the Israeli-Palestinian...
Read More From: Israel to put Palestinians and Themselves in Very Large Cage
"The fact is that settlements continue to grow today, encouraged by specific government policies and at enormous expense to Israel's economy, and this persists even as it becomes clear that the logic of settlements and the reality of demographics could threaten the future of Israel as a Jewish democracy."
Read More From: Washington Fires Scud at Israel's Settlement Policy
The agent is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson 4th, a former ambassador to Gabon. It was Mr. Wilson who, more than a year and a half ago, concluded in a report to the C.I.A. that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium ore in Niger in an effort to build nuclear arms. But his report was ignored, and Ambassador Wilson has been highly critical of how the administration handled intelligence claims regarding Iraq's nuclear weapons programs, suggesting that Mr. Bush's aides and Vice President Dick Cheney's office tried to inflate the threat.
Read More From: White House Out's CIA Agent for Telling the Truth?
In a letter sent Thursday to CIA Director George Tenet and obtained by news organizations, two leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said the absence of proof that Iraq had destroyed its chemical and biological weapons "was considered proof that they continued to exist."
The letter was signed by Republican Rep. Porter Goss of Florida, the panel's chairman.
Read More From: Reason and War, Never the Twain Shall Meet!
An intensive six-month search of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has failed to discover a single trace of an illegal arsenal, according to accounts of a report circulating in Washington and London. "It will mainly be an accounting of...
No doubt this 70% also includes the Pentagon News Channel (Or Fox News as we know it).
Bush does NOT believe Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attack.
Read More From: 70% of Americans Think Iraq had Something to do with 9/11
A Chinese Journo speaking of the war in Iraq suggests that perhaps the Governments in the US and UK do not represent the will of the people. No One bats an Eye Lid........
Read More From: Dateline London, BBC 24 News TV
When will Bush administration admit mistakes? - Consider Bush's statement on July 2 in response to a question about attackers targeting our troops. "Bring 'em on," our president declared. "We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." Mr. President, they're bringing it on.
Read More From: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Freedom of speech... that's the motherfukin bullshit... you say the wrong thing they lock u'r ass up quick!
-- Ice T, from Freedom of Speech Ashcroft and Bush have decided to prosecute people who protested against the Iraq war by becoming human shields. Evidence suggests Faith Fippinger has been targeted because of her choice to speak out about the recent Iraq War. Already under heavy criticism - in part for its failure to produce the weapons of mass destruction that were a major justification for the war - the Bush Administration cannot be happy that Fippinger and others are drawing on their firsthand knowledge of the war to add to the chorus. If so, then Fippinger is facing criminal charges largely because she availed herself of her First Amendment rights. Accordingly, she may be able to convince a court to dismiss these charges on the ground that they violate the Constitution. Read More...
ANNISTON, Alabama -- The U.S. army yesterday fired up its first chemical weapons incinerator near a residential area and destroyed a Cold War-era rocket loaded with enough sarin nerve gas to wipe out a city.
Read More From: Weapons of Mass Destruction Found! In Alabama...
He said it will take time to "put together" the evidence so that it is convincing and will stand international scrutiny.
He also said he has found new evidence on how Iraq successfully misled United Nations inspectors and hid material from them. Prior to 1998, when they were withdrawn, U.N. inspectors focused on Iraq's deception operation and made it a central part of its final report. Kay said today that interviews with people who took part show, "The active deception program is truly amazing once you get inside it."
Read More From: Iraq Active Deception Program "Amazing" - Sand Declared a WMD
The attacks of September 11 might have been prevented had the U.S. intelligence community been more competent. And the Bush Administration is refusing to tell the public what intelligence the president saw before 9/11 about the threat posed by Al Qaeda.
Read More From: Preventing the September 11 Attacks - The Congressional Report
The Japanese parliament has approved plans to send ground troops to Iraq to assist in post-war reconstruction.
Read More From: Japan to Invade Iraq
NEW YORK, July 22 -- A federal judge tossed out two major terrorism charges today against a prominent attorney for radicals, saying the charges were unconstitutionally vague and "reveal a lack of prosecutorial standards."
"The indictment of Lynne Stewart, I thought, was a very unfair attack on lawyering. This judge's ruling . . . upholds zealous advocacy and does not indict a lawyer for lawyering and being a lawyer."
Read More From: Ashcroft Says "Represent a Terror Suspect Makes you a Terrorist"
•Rep. Stark:"Excuse me. Whoa. Excuse me, Mr. Yinn, you're not reading."
•Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.): "If the gentleman from California would understand that he's reading the table of contents, which is at the beginning of the bill. He will then move to the body of the bill. That's how these things work."
•Stark: "Its eloquence overwhelms me, Mr. Chairman, just like your intellect does."
A transcript of the committee meeting quoted Stark as belittling Thomas's intellect. Although the transcript does not show it, McInnis interjected, ''Shut up.'' The transcript then shows Stark saying: ''You think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come on. Come over here and make me. I dare you, you little fruitcake.''
Stark said in an interview later that he regretted calling McInnis a ''fruitcake.'' But he also said the transcript missed his telling Thomas, ''You're behaving like a fascist.''
Read More From: Democrats boycott; GOP calls in police, passes pension bill
July 9: Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, in a letter to the BBC, identifies the official as David Kelly, a weapons adviser.
July 15: Kelly tells Foreign Affairs Committee he believes he was not the source of Gilligan's report, but confirms that they met.
July 17: Gilligan recalled to private session of Foreign Affairs Committee. Chairman Donald Anderson said Gilligan was an "unsatisfactory witness" who changed his story; Gilligan rejects charge.
Late that night, Kelly was reported missing.
July 18: Body, tentatively identified as Kelly, found in woods near his home.
Read More From: Chronology of Dispute Over Iraq Dossier
Office of Special Plans Setup to Push for War with Iraq
Senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
Read More From: Office of Special Plans Setup to Push for War with Iraq
The Indiana Republican Senator Luger is worried the American people were being blindsided, too, by the true costs in blood and treasure of a war that has yet to end. “This idea that we will be in [Iraq] ‘just as long as we need to and not a day more’,” he said, paraphrasing the administration line, “is rubbish! We’re going to be there a long time.” Lugar said he kept demanding answers about the cost to American taxpayers and was not quite getting them. “Where does the money come from?”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a hearing that the “burn rate” for American money to fund the military presence in Iraq was now $3.9 billion a month—almost $1 billion a week. “This is tough stuff,” said a cranky Rumsfeld, lecturing the Senate committee. “This is hard work. This takes time. We need to have some patience.”
But that billion a week is just the beginning.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to expect this to go on," Rumsfeld said on NBC's Meet the Press.
"And there's even speculation that during the month of July, which is an anniversary for a lot of Baathist (deposed president Saddam Hussein's party) events, we could see an increase in the number of attacks," he said.
Read More From: Rummy Feeling Blue
The alert was sent to all police forces in England and Wales last Monday after a van containing the uranium was stolen from the firm’s depot on an industrial estate in Purfleet. The vehicle had been left unlocked and the keys were in the ignition.
Read More From: Fantastically this was buried on page 7 today - Uranium theft puts Britain on alert
The State of the Union message is one of America's greatest inventions, conceived by the Founders to force a powerful Chief Executive to report to a public suspicious of kings. Delivered to a joint session of Congress in democracy's biggest cathedral, it is the most important speech a President gives each year, written and rewritten and then polished again. Yet the address George W. Bush gave on Jan. 28 was more consequential than most because he was making a revolutionary case: why a nation that traditionally didn't start fights should wage a pre-emptive war. As Bush noted that night, "Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead."
Read More From: Lies Damn Lies and Un-American Presidential Behavior
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? ... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Peace groups attempted to purchase commercial time to broadcast ads for peace, but were refused air time by all the major networks and even MTV. CBS network president Martin Franks explained the refusal by saying, "We think that informed discussion comes from our news programming."
Market research company Music Programming Ltd (MPL) said 87% of its respondents who downloaded music admitted they bought albums after hearing tracks through the internet.
The REAL reson for the decline of music sales is the decline in quality music and the focus of the industry on the mass market.
Iraq Weapons Unlikely to be Found
The U.S. administration has abruptly revised its explanation for invading Iraq, as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserted that a changed perspective after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — not fresh evidence of banned weapons — provoked the war.
Read More From: We Just Can't Find Em! ;(
Oh my Oh My. Back in the day when I was an intern for Sen. Wyche Fowler (a sort of Georgia Liberal Democrat if you can believe that!) I worked across the call from Sen. Thurmond (alias 'Spermin' because at 87 he was still able to impregnate his young wife).
Read More From: Senator Strom 'Spermin' Thurmond dies at 100
In a rare reversal of a past ruling, the majority concluded that the court's backing of anti-sodomy laws 17 years ago "was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today." Kennedy cited "an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in [sexual] matters."
Read More From: Supreme Court Overturns Sodomy Laws of 13 States
